Who's all going to play FFXIV A Realm Reborn when it gets released?

[Ouch!]

It has been stated that unlike in 1.x, grinding on mobs will not be as efficient as leveling through quests.

That will be a problem for more than just leveling, though. Maybe for the earlier levels, mob grinding still won't be effective, but if we can't go out near cap with a party of eight and wreck stuff? That's going to affect soulbonding parties pretty heavily--which may be what they're looking for. But that'll really upset people. I suppose we'll find out when beta hits phase three and we can bring in our capped characters.

[chionos]

I will be playing. I was on the fence for a while, but the game just looks too awesome to ignore.

I can't imagine them nerfing xp from mobs to give questing a leg up instead of simply boosting quest xp. In other words, just because grinding isn't as efficient as questing, it doesn't mean grinding won't be viable. And of course, coming from SE, it could just be a lie to silence the whiners.

[Ouch!]

That would make more sense. I misread Bob's statement and interpreted it as a nerf to experience from regular mobs rather than a significant boost to experience from quests. The quest exp. in the alpha made leveling from monsters look like nothing by comparison, but they also said that there was still significant balancing to be done there.

[Mirage]

I'll be playing. I'm in Europe but will most likely be playing on an US East server.

The feeling amongst people who have looked into the quotes on server locations is that it will be likely that the American servers will be in Square-Enix's existing datacenter in Los Angeles for multiple reasons, mostly to do with having an existing team in this location capable of dealing with servers and the ease of maintenance and security.

Feeling, huh.

Isn't the population greater on the east side of the US than the west? I have a feeling that there might be servers on both sides of the continent.

[Loony BoB]

Yeah, it's by no means concrete information, but having datacentres in each of the existing HQ's does make sense for a lot of reasons, and if the lag is decreased as much as people are hoping then it shouldn't make a massive difference.

One person mentioned Montreal as a possibility due to SE having staff there, too.

[SkyRender]

Well, if SE decides to expand and put a Data Center on the East Coast, I hope they use EMC equipment. It would be cool to setup their servers! I'll try to harass their SAN team for some beta keys... if only I could be so lucky.

[The Summoner of Leviathan]

One person mentioned Montreal as a possibility due to SE having staff there, too.

They do have both an Eidos studio here (which was here before their purchase of the company) and opened up a SE proper studio. So it would make sense!

[Mirage]

Yeah, it's by no means concrete information, but having datacentres in each of the existing HQ's does make sense for a lot of reasons, and if the lag is decreased as much as people are hoping then it shouldn't make a massive difference.

One person mentioned Montreal as a possibility due to SE having staff there, too.

Lag will definitely be reduced for both americans and europeans with datacenters on each of those continents. The reason I want US east servers is mainly because I want to play with some american friends, and then it would be a sweet spot for all of us if we played on US east, seeing as from europe to US west, I'm looking at latencies in the ball park of what I currently have to Japan. Likewise, if my friend in arizona is to play on an european server, his latency would be terrible too, but if we all are on an east coast server, it'll be acceptable for all of us.

[Loony BoB]

What I was getting at is that if they improve the server structure and performance as much as they are suggesting, the latency issue will no longer rear it's ugly head and people will be able to get off whatever Ifrit-plume-esque timing based things that Square-Enix throw in there. So hopefully people playing on different servers won't really notice any issues regardless of which server they are playing on. It's also worth noting that while people might go on about being on their own server, the fact that instanced content is planned to be cross-world (so people from different servers can join up together and fight in the same instance) suggests it could end up being on a different server altogether anyway, meaning effectively they won't be choosing where the server is for those instances and could end up with the same latency issues no matter how close they are to their chosen server. :S Unless I'm understanding the idea behind the worldless content finder.

When all is said and done, though, most of my LS are hoping that the latency issue just doesn't come up because of the optimised servers, meaning we can remain on our existing World no matter where it ends up. Latency was a major concern for Yoshi-P (he's a big PVP fan) so it makes sense that he'll do what he can within reason to get everyone on a fairly level playing field.